


Come here often

by womanroaring



Category: In Other Lands | The Turn of the Story - Sarah Rees Brennan
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Role-Playing Game, and pick each other up in the bar, that game where you pretend not to know each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:21:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24403477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/womanroaring/pseuds/womanroaring
Summary: Elliot tries to teach Luke about roleplaying to spice things up in the bedroom. Only rated "M" for mention of sexytimes, nothing explicit
Relationships: Elliot Schafer/Luke Sunborn
Comments: 10
Kudos: 64





	Come here often

“Hello there, handsome,” Elliot said, with a lascivious grin. “Do you come here often?”

Luke, who had been looking down at the bar, his expression a mixture of embarrassment and resignation, looked up with a wry smile.

“First time here,” he said.

“I’m Elliot,” Elliot said, putting out his hand. “What’s your name?”

“You know, I wish you’d been this polite when we actually did meet for the first time.”

“I’m not being polite, I’m being horny,” Elliot snapped. Luke knocked his mug of ale over; he caught it before it fell. Elliot ignored this feat of reflexes and dexterity, choosing to hiss at the love of his life instead: “Stick to the script.”

The script, the script. Luke had been startled, confused, suspicious, and then annoyed, when Elliot had brought up roleplaying.

“Quit messing around,” he had said. “I don’t want to pretend you aren’t you. These games sound weird and embarrassing. It sounds like _acting_.”

“Ok, we can come back to the kinkier stuff. What about the one where we pretend we don’t know each other, and are only meeting for the first time? We’re still us, just… a different version of us.”

“That’s a game? It’s not a game I ever heard of.”

“You’ve never heard of any of them! I swear, this place -”

But Luke had wrapped him in his arms, because he had heard something that sounded like insecurity and worry in his voice, and Elliot had chosen to kiss him instead of arguing further. That night.

He had pestered and pestered, however (“you’re not going to know if you like it until you try it! Remember how much you liked it the first time you finally let me -” “keep your voice down!” “Just once, can we try it just _once_!” “Fine, _anything_ to shut you up!”), and now, here they were. Luke had only said that he would _try_ ; but that nobody else could be there. He had hoped an opportunity just wouldn’t present itself, since the outpost they were staying in was reasonably busy, but Elliot had kept an eye on the building all week. He hadn’t even let Luke change his dusty clothes when he had seen their chance, but dragged him physically up to the public house and shoved him through the door, refusing to come in himself until Luke was sitting at the bar with a drink.

“I’m Luke,” Luke said, his teeth only slightly gritted. He risked a glance at the barkeeper; the man quickly looked away and made his way over to the other side of the room and started packing chairs up. Luke cleared his throat. One of Elliot’s early drafts had had Elliot reply at this point by saying he’d have to remember that name for when he was screaming it later, and Luke had said he would walk out if he did so.

Elliot started making pleasant small talk at this, asking what Luke “did”, how long he’d been at the outpost, if he’d seen the sights. He had some backstory about how he was looking for ancient ruins, which he said could have been his living if he’d stayed on the other side of the wall. Arke-something, he’d called it. It was half-true; Elliot really had been looking around for those.

Luke felt himself relaxing. This was pretty harmless. But then he found himself thinking, what if this _was_ how they had met? What if Luke, lonely after weeks on campaign, had met a charming redheaded stranger at a bar? Would he have bothered resisting their increasingly obvious interest?

Luke realised with a sinking feeling that yes, he would have. He would have been too shy to have talked to anyone he didn’t know for this long; and he would have missed out on giving a chance to the love of his life.

“Wait,” he said. “Um -- banana day query.”

“Oh my god,” Elliot said. “It’s _daiquiri_ , and what could possibly have you crying the codeword already? I haven’t even put my hand on your leg yet.”

“I would never have stayed talking to a stranger this long.”

“Luke, the whole point is that I’m not a stranger. You pretend to pick up your partner at a bar, and take this ‘stranger’ home to have crazy sex with them.”

Luke’s wings burst out at this.

Elliot looked at him in triumph.

Luke closed his wings with a cross snap.

“I understand, but this other version of me is still me, and I would never do that. No matter how pent-up I probably was at that point. So -- I’m going to bid you a polite good evening now, and go out the door, and then come back in and pretend that we’ve bumped into each other again _tomorrow_ night, ok?”

Elliot looked at him for a moment. And then he smiled.

“Ok,” he said.

When Luke sat back down at the bar, he gave Elliot a shy smile and a polite nod of the head.

“Well, hello again,” Elliot said with a warm smile. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“I _am_ posted here. Did you end up finding those ruins you were looking for?”

“Wait, wait -- banana daiquiri,” Elliot said. “If we’re going for reality here, I do need to point out that you probably wouldn’t have even remembered who I was, let alone what I was supposed to be doing here.”

Luke squinted at him. “What?”

“You have absolutely no memory for names or faces. You only get away with how rude that is because you’re hot and a Sunborn.”

Luke let this go, choosing instead to reach up and tug on his hair. “You’re my type,” he said, softly, and then let his hand run down Elliot’s neck, his torso. “Trust me. I would remember you.”

“You didn’t notice who Dale Wavechaser was for literal years -” (Luke removed his hand from Elliot’s belt at this) “- wasn’t he your type?”

“Not when we were _literally children_ , he wasn’t!”

“I think your real type is “provocative”, “orders you around” and “makes you work for it”. The bright hair was just the icing on the cake.”

“Well, you’re being pretty provocative.” Luke looked at him and narrowed his eyes. “Wait. Why would this other version of _you_ have hit on _me_?”

Elliot smirked and ostentatiously let his eyes run down Luke’s form.

“So -- you would have just hit on any attractive stranger you happened to see in this bar?” Luke couldn’t have said why he was outraged and upset by this, but he was. They had discussed this before, of course, and Elliot had explained that he didn’t just hit on _everybody_ , thank you very much, but Luke had struggled with the idea that they were so different when it came to this one thing. Elliot had once mused that Luke’s harpy genes might be responsible for his lack of interest in “sowing his wild oats” (Luke had never heard this idiom before and never wanted to again); birds imprinted on people, and they mated for life. Luke had thought he was probably onto something, but was still reassured when the present Elliot, sitting across from the bar from him replied with, “Well, no, I wouldn’t have hit on you without talking to you first, to make sure you weren’t boring or a jerk. I had no interest in you, you will recall, when we did meet, because I _did_ think you were a jerk. Now that we have sufficiently explained that we would definitely have found each other attractive, are we ever allowed to get back to what we’re supposed to be doing?”

Luke nodded at him.

Elliot shook himself to get back into character.

“I didn’t find the ruins yet,” Elliot said, leaning forwards. “I found something else I want to explore, though.”

“So what’s so great about these ruins?” Luke asked, ignoring Elliot’s hand, which was now moving up his thigh. “Won’t it just be a bunch of fallen down old buildings?”

Elliot looked at him and narrowed his eyes. “I’m looking for proof of which race settled this area first. Humans have set up this outpost here, and may very well try to start farming soon. If there is a prior claim, it might cause war with the trolls or the elves.”

“Is that a problem? War is a good way to solve a fight.”

Elliot narrowed his eyes further. “Banana daiquiri.”

Luke smiled at him. “Yes, darling?”

“What are you doing.”

“You said we needed to make chit chat at this point. I’m making chit chat.”

“This is not sexy chit chat.”

“This is the chit chat I would have made if I had never met you. That version of Luke never had his eyes opened to how … wrong certain aspects were, about the actions of the humans in these lands, how glorified being good at violence was. This Elliot has a lot of work ahead of him. It might take him all night to persuade this Luke that he’s doing anything of value. I think that this version of Elliot isn’t going to bother doing the work.”

“It’s wonderful,” Elliot said, through his teeth, “that you’re finally embracing the scenario and getting into character, but you’re missing the point. Your motivation in this scene is to get the redhead into bed. Not to put him off. Please sacrifice verisimilitude to the altar of your libido.”

“I don’t know what you just said, but all I’m saying is -- this other Luke has no chance with you. Elliot is going to write him off as an idiot.”

“I’m ready to write the real Luke off as an idiot at this point.”

The real Luke smiled and wrapped his wings around Elliot, ran his hand slowly up the outside of Elliot’s thigh. “No, you aren’t. I was worried, when you mentioned that you wanted to start playing these games, that you were bored of me. That’s not it at all, is it?”

“I _told_ you it wasn’t.”

Luke smiled, and sat back, and put his wings away. He cleared his throat. “Those ruins sound _very_ interesting,” he said. “You seem very interesting. I would like to get to know you better. _Much_ better.”

“Shut up,” Elliot said, and took his hand, and dragged him back to their room and took his pants off.

They did not have the steamy anonymous sex Elliot had envisaged, but the intimate, intense kind that was only possible with someone who knew you inside out, who you could communicate completely with, who knew all of the selfish and the insecure and the weird parts of you, and loved those bits too.

Afterwards, sprawled over his chest, Elliot asked, “Have you never wished things _had_ gone differently with us? That we hadn’t spent years misunderstanding each other, but had met as sensible adults?”

“You’re a sensible adult, are you?” Luke said. Elliot bit him on the shoulder. Luke said “ow” even as he laughed, and heard the softness in his own voice when he said, “I wouldn’t change anything. Anyway, if things hadn’t have gone exactly the way that they did, then I -- probably wouldn’t have been able to keep Serene as my sword sister, because I wouldn’t have been able to speak Elvish. I would have been so lonely. And no one would have opened my eyes about -- a lot of things. The way you treated me, like I was still the same, after I found out about my wings -- that helped me so much. So -- I am very grateful that you decided to stay at the camp the first year, and came back every year afterwards. I’m glad we met when we did.”

“Also, we all might very well have ended up dead by now,” Elliot said, less romantically.

“That… is also true. Thank you. For saving my life. And working so hard to make these lands safer.”

“Thank you for saving my life. And working so hard to make these lands safer.”

“I’m sorry our date didn’t go quite the way you had planned.”

“The end result was the same,” Elliot said, and bit Luke again -- more gently this time. One of Luke’s wings twitched.

“Hello there, handsome,” Elliot said.

**Author's Note:**

> For my friend magiclamd, who makes me write things


End file.
